SFT France Protests Centre Pompidou Over Artist’s Fireworks Stunt in Occupied Tibet
By Tenzin Chokyi
DHARAMSALA, 23 Oct: A French contemporary art institution, the Centre Pompidou, faced protest from Tibetan activists in France on Thursday amid a fireworks performance by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, held to mark the museum’s temporary closure. Cai continues to face global backlash for a controversial and pernicious fireworks art stunt carried out last month on a sacred mountain in Shigatse, in occupied Tibet.
Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) France staged the protest as spectators gathered to watch Cai’s AI-assisted fireworks show, “Le Dernier Carnaval,” at the Centre Pompidou, denouncing the institution’s complicity in China’s ecological and colonial vandalism in occupied Tibet.
The Centre and its collaborator, Group F– a French company specialising in large scale pyrotechnic and multimedia performances and entrusted with executing the fireworks – are being accused of celebrating an artist whose recent pyrotechnic performance, conducted without the consent of the Tibetan people and in collaboration with Arc’teryx, caused irreparable damage to one of the world’s most fragile ecosystems.
SFT France connects this reckless art stunt to the larger colonial framework of China’s occupation of Tibet, arguing that such actions are made possible precisely because of the ongoing colonial rule, which enables the exploitation of the region and the erasure of Tibetan identity.
“Art without ethics is nothing more than a disguised power. When artistic expression erases life and cultures, the institutions that support it become accomplices,”, stated SFT France in a written response to Tibet Express.
The protest is also demanding ethical accountability from White Cube, a private contemporary art gallery in London founded by Jay Jopling, which hosted Cai’s solo show titled “Gunpowder and Abstraction 2015–2025,” shortly after he faced global criticism for the fireworks stunt in occupied Tibet .
The exhibition is currently ongoing at White Cube, scheduled from 26 September to 9 November 2025.
Incidents of kowtowing to China’s expansionist policies within the international community, particularly in public institutions in France, have become more the rule than the exception in recent years. SFT France is also engaged in a legal battle against the Guimet Museum, which has conveniently replaced the name “Tibet” with China’s colonial term, “ Himalayan world,” in the section of the exhibition previously labeled as “Nepal-Tibet”. .
This nomenclature serves to reduce the region to a vague, exoticised geographical concept that erases its unique cultural and political identities, while simultaneously justifying its subjugation under the guise of naturalising the territory.
Both the Musée Guimet and the French government have not responded to the UN’s request for clarity regarding alleged collaboration between French public institutions and Chinese authorities. The UN declared that such collaboration contributes to the sinicisation of Tibetan heritage by the Chinese government and undermines the rights of the Tibetan people.
SFT France stated that the erasure of “Tibet” is now an openly adopted policy by the Chinese government. “Unfortunately, we are witnessing signs of this being echoed in some cultural institutions in the West.” They emphasised that Tibetans in the free world must remain vigilant against a policy that is inherently violent. More importantly, they urged Tibetan leaders and the Tibetan exile government to engage in discussion and develop strategies to counter it.
